Making It Up As I Go Along #232

MONDAY…
--- I hurt my knee while sleeping. I’m hobbling around all day today but it’s pretty good by the time I leave at 3:00. But the question remains… how do you hurt your knee as you sleep?
--- A nap and evening ironing are just really not very exciting.

TUESDAY…
--- Not a bad day at work. Afterwards, I get Karl and we got to Gatineau Park for a hike. Get a good view of much of Gatineau… and also a distant view of Ottawa.
--- A fall asleep on the sofa for almost an hour before heading to bed… hope it doesn’t fool up my sleep.

WEDNESDAY…
--- Not a bad day at work. Golf afterwards. Atlas, Trevor, Phil Charron-Fortin and myself. Pretty good round for the second time out this year.

THURSDAY…
--- Busy day of work… a nap and spaghetti for supper in the evening.
--- I was awake around 3:30 this morning and never got back to sleep… so the nap in the early evening is no surprise.

FRIDAY…
--- Work is even paced… good for a Friday. An after work nap is followed by a baseball game with Nick, Sheila, Casey and Isaac from the office… plus a bunch of Nick’s friends. They lose the game and Isaac disappears by about the 7th inning… but it’s a pretty good night out.

SATURDAY…
--- Quiet day with some laundry. Join Linda Jackson in the evening and drive with her to the office pig roast. We stop along the way to where our new office will be… it’s a forty-five minute drive to get to the new office from my place… enough to make me say I will move before our office does… two years and counting.
--- Pig roast is good. Lots of time spent with Linda, her daughter, her daughter’s friend, Derek, Kiyomi, and Louis.


After the Show
After a night at the movies, Karl and I begin walking back to his apartment. He lives some ten minutes away from the Mayfair (an old style, one screen cinema) and whenever we agree to see a movie there, I park at his apartment. From there we walk along Bank Street, cross the bridge over the Rideau River, take the path under the bridge and walk through the side streets of the surrounding neighbourhood. It makes the ten minute walk fifteen minutes instead… but it’s better.

After our movie, we head back to his apartment. Escaping the bustle of Bank Street, we chat through the still night with our footsteps as the main source of noise. When footsteps dominate the noise of a city, you know it’s a quiet night.

Most of my night time walks have been alone. Here in Ottawa I walk alone after evening shift. And back home, in St. John’s, if I was walking at night it would be by myself as well. Most of my friends in St. John’s are with families now and they live in the suburbs. Walking city streets doesn’t rank very high on their list of daily priorities.

I love walking at night alone but it is a nice change to occasionally do such a walk with a friend. Karl and I chat during our amble home. We talk of the movie we just watched. We talk of the creative process of writing. And we talk about drawing and painting as well (Karl’s main creative hobby).

As we walk, another noise disturbs our footfalls. We stop talking and look across the street to see a woman, standing in her doorway and sweeping her front walk.

It’s 11:30 at night and she’s hunched over her broom with a pink hooded sweatshirt on and the hood up, hiding her face. Behind her, the all glass storm door allows the light of her lower unit apartment to silhouette her. The kitchen cupboards, table and chairs are clear in the light space of indoors. The old style, two story house surrounds and rises up from this beacon of homeliness. And she stoops out front… sweeping.

As we pass, Karl and I look at each other and smile. Such scenes as these are just pushed into the background of a busy, metropolitan day. You walk by and pay them no heed. But at night, in the stillness, it’s a conceptual painting brought to life.

We walk on, returning to the sound of our steps, and turn our discussion to the scene we just saw. We speak of the pink hood over the woman’s face. We speak of possible reasons why a person would take it upon themselves to go sweeping outside, late on a Saturday night. And we speak of the glow of the home within and how inviting it looked.

As we keep going, Karl asks me about how I write. He asks if I could describe our current scene and make a story of it. I think about it and feel a little pressure to try to describe our walk as a story teller this very second. But I tell him that such things usually happen hours or days after the fact, when my imagination plays with it and my memory becomes a picture.

As I’m telling him this, trying to describe the process I use, a black and white cat darts across the street and crosses the sidewalk in front of us. Again, we both pause and chuckle. I gesture towards the driveway the cat jutted up and say “that could be a part of such a story.” I look up the driveway as we walk past and see the dim whiteness of that black and white cat as it pauses at a gate, staring at us cautiously, waiting to see if it needs to scurry under the gate to safety or if it is fine where it stands.

We continue on. Returning under the bridge and coming up around on the other side. But instead of continuing on to the apartment, Karl suggests a drink at the local pub, and we backtrack along Bank Street for a block or two. We sit and continue our chatting over a couple of pints.

By the time we reach Karl’s apartment, it’s just past 1:00. Karl suggests a pizza before I head home and I’m intrigued to try out the local pizza place. We place our order and stand in the porch like customer area as we wait. A twenty-five year old TV is in the corner playing an old black and white Elvis Presley movie. The occasional distortion and lines on the screen tell us there’s no cable hook up. Only an antenna gives us the picture and I’m mesmerized by the memories as we await the pizza.

A city is at it’s best late at night.